So late, so sorry. It’s been a hectic summer with road trips, family visits, and just generally busy. Life gets that way sometimes. Here it is anyway. Part 2 as promised. Blog Post #124.

Verona

One major highlight of our trip to Italy in May was the Arena de Verona. It was spectacular. We didn’t stay for the concert but we heard that The Gladiators were coming up next.

The Search Gone Wrong

Before we arrived in Bologna, my wife and I used the interweb to search and research for our trip. Googling “Bologna Subway” did not yield the results we hoped for.

We arrived in Bologna by train and planned to take the bus to our hotel. There’s no subway other than the one that makes sandwiches. At the front of the train station were a series of bus stops with various numbers and letters. There were letters representing each bus stop and there were letters representing various numbered busses. We went to the stop we thought was ours, waited while we cooked in the sun, but our bus never came. We realized we had the wrong stop and the wrong bus. We moved to another stop and waited before realizing later that although we had the right bus number, the stop we wanted going the direction we wanted to go was on the other side of the street. We crossed the street and waited there for our bus.

The bus finally came and upon boarding, there was a card reader that required a bus card. We didn’t have a bus card and it did not clearly say you could use a credit card. We decided to just ride… like rebels from another land.

As we came to the very first stop, the bus shut down. Wow, is that what happens when non-paying rebels from a distant land violate the sanctity of the bus fare in Italy? It turns out that the bus had just broken down. Rather than wait for the next bus, we walked the 16 minutes to the hotel and vowed never to take a bus in Bologna again.

Take Me to Church

We walked looking for a road that went right. Although we didn’t know iti, we guessed it was Via de Poeti.

We ended up at a hotel that was part of a church. We saw popes doing ceremonies and drinking wine. We too drank wine. It was probably the only thing we had in common. I couldn’t drink the water there. It burned me.

Words of Wisdom

1. Be careful eating street food in foreign countries. You never know the standards.

We arrived in Verona in the afternoon. We noted that our hotel bathroom had a bidet just as the hotel in Venice had had. It gave us a warm feeling.

Once we were out and about, we found a street festival. My wife was hungry and she decided to get a sandwich from a outdoor vendor. The meat was out and being sliced by an older gruff man while his wife took orders, payments, and put together sandwiches. While I don’t speak Italian, I do understand Bitternese. These two continually bickered and snapped at each other while putting together my wife’s sandwich. It was a sandwich made with hate.

That night, I slept well hearing nothing untoward. I didn’t know that my wife spent the night on the toilet. She had food poisoning with the sandwich trying to get out of her in every way possible. That extra toilet saved the biday.

2. Know where you are.

My wife and I really enjoyed Geneva, Switzerland. We met up with good friends, tried great wine, and took in incredible nature. It was strange moving around figuring out where we were. One moment, we’re in France, then Switzerland, then France. Are we in France now? No… but now we are… and now we’re not. We’ll be back in France in a minute.

The Long Way Home

We arrived back in Paris looking forward to our direct flight to Vancouver. We boarded, got comfortable, and waited. An announcement from the pilot came a couple minutes before the scheduled take off, “We have a technical difficulty and will be taxiing to the maintenance area to have it looked at.” We taxied and then waited before another announcement, “Sorry folks. We will be disembarking and getting on a new plane.” We left the plane and were bussed to the terminal. Initially, not enough buses were sent so we stood on the tarmac for a while. It was fun.

After arriving back at the terminal, we waited while being given no information. It was also fun. Finally, we were told to go to a gate. When we arrived at the gate, we were given the bad news along with new instructions. The flight was cancelled and we would need to go to Departures. Going to Departures involved going through customs, passport checks, and security to return to “France”. So we went, lined up, went through the line, lined up again, went through, to finally make it to the other side.

Once we arrived at Departures, we found the area where every staff member of Air France was waiting for us. They brought people out of retirement to sit at the various desks to address this calamity. We stood in that line up for over four hours as people made their way to the desks to figure out how they were going to get to Vancouver.

When our turn finally came, the clerk very boldly stated, “We’ve got a flight for you tomorrow to Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. You’ll wait there for five hours before taking another flight to Vancouver.”

”No.” I said, “We’re not doing that.”

After some negotiations, research, and phone calls, we accepted a flight to Montreal the next day and a flight to Vancouver the following day. Air France put us in a hotel in Paris for the night and we departed the next day.

Once home, we applied for reimbursement and received most of the money back for the entire trip (the full round trip). That’s how you fly to Paris and back for almost free. We’re hoping to do that again next time we fly to Europe.

Well, that’s it for this late blog. I’m hopeful that the next post is coming soon. Thank you to everyone who supports this blog and sends messages of support. It’s now time for the ending jokes. I was asked how the AC/DC concert was in April. It was fantastic so I thought I’d share a bit more about that here. Enjoy.

It was crazy to see 50 000 people rocking to the music of 70 year old Angus Young and 77 year old Brian Johnson. Angus Young never stopped moving. That’s the thing with Angus. He’ll always be Young.

Funny looks and laughs: Half way through the concert, I leaned over to my friend and loudly stated, “If they don’t play Bad Medicine or November Rain, I’m going to be very upset!”